[bho]

i think the deal is that it wasn't like this for ruby before.(and it still really isn't, but rails has grown exponentially)

[bphogan]

It's been like this with Ruby since certain developers have been pushing harder for 1.9 adoption. A new developer is gonna pick the higher version number, cos higher version means newer. They're then gonna wonder why some gem doesn't work :)

[zem]

to be fair, there are lots of very real advantages to 1.9. the development community finally seems to have collectively decided to take the plunge, and let the gems catch up, rather than waiting around on 1.8 forever.